What is the Severance policy for Sales representatives in Belgium?

Modified on: Fri, 29 Aug, 2025 at 4:15 PM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Who Qualifies for Clientele Indemnity?
How Much Is the Indemnity?
When Is It Not Paid?

When a sales representative from your team is offboarded without serious cause, they may be entitled to two types of compensation:

Indemnity in lieu of notice: If you, as the employer, offboard them without a notice period, your must pay the salary and benefits they would have earned during that time.
Clientele Indemnity: This is a special compensation for losing access to the clients they, as sales representatives, brought or developed for the company. It’s meant to cover the potential loss of future income from those clients.

Who Qualifies for Clientele Indemnity?

Sales representatives in your team may be entitled to this payment if:

They were dismissed (not for serious misconduct).
They worked as a sales representative for at least 1 year.
They brought in or developed clients for the company.
They suffered a financial loss due to losing those clients.

To prove they brought clients to your company, they can use:

Sales reports
Order forms
Customer feedback
Any other legal proof

If the contract includes a non-compete clause, it's assumed they brought clients, unless you as the employer prove otherwise.

How Much Is the Indemnity?

3 months’ salary if they worked between 1 and 5 years.
+1 month for every additional 5 years of service.
The clientele indemnity is treated as salary. This means it is subject to social security contributions and withholding tax, just like regular severance pay.

The calculation includes all benefits: commissions, bonuses, company car use, meal vouchers, etc.

When Is It Not Paid?

As the employer, you may avoid paying the clientele indemnity if:

The employee is retiring and don’t plan to work again.
The employee is permanently unable to work.
The clients follow the offboarded employee to their next job.

However, these exceptions are rarely accepted by courts.